Shadowmouth

Sunday

Sep 30, 2012 at 12:01 AM

By MICHAEL ANDERSON manderson@thehawkeye.com

Terror.

Sing of terror among the leaf smokes and days falling cold to the salt-tinged dirt. It is a twisted bottlecap, a crushed cat carcass in the gutter, a soiled condom in the drought-choked grass. It is the stink in Tom Leggett Jr.'s breath as he stumbles down empty streets, running from the thing closing in behind him. Terror creaking in his old bones, moaning beneath the fluorescent boughs of the Dollar Tree, a grotesquerie glanced sidelong through colored glass bottles, in sunken eyes a terrific kind of terror, shambling down buckled brick alleyways greased with rainlight. Listen for it in the water wells, at once low and slow, now a panicked whine sputtering through tangled skeins of wire ripped from the walls, a ragged gasp through the pipes, a sound the children for the rest of their lives will try and fail to forget.

The sound it made, and the sound of Tom Leggett Jr. running toward the river. Running because the town had not forgiven him.

Earlier that night he had crouched alone upon his customary stool in the back room of the Paddle Wheel, a trail of beer foam congealing down the side of his empty glass. His hands folded on the table in front of him, Tom stared out the window into the dark of the street while a group of young girls in tight-fitting skirts played darts with their boyfriends, drinking and dancing to the music on the juke box. He could feel their eyes on the back of his head, could hear their whispered voices, their barely stifled laughs. "... face like a horse," one of them said; a "waste of space" another replied, and something like "... should have killed himself a long time ago."

Tom ignored them, refocusing his eyes on the ghostly haze of fingerprint smudges in the center of the window. His deformed features leered back at him, crinkled papery skin tempered by a ghastly neon glow. If he squinted and closed one eye, he could almost see what he had looked like before the fire laid its searing fingers across his cheeks and down his neck, melting his once handsome face like wax.

It happened today, he thought to himself, absentmindedly tracing the path of the flames down the bridge of his nose. In another hour or so, a year ago today. He remembered coming to, still drunk in the ambulance, only beginning to sober up as the pain streaked through his body. He remembered the doctors telling him, and unbidden the image of his daughter's face crept into his mind. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shouted into the bustling main room of the bar for something more to drink.

He felt something brush against his elbow as one of the girls from the dartboard shuffled past the pool table with a pitcher of beer in her hand. She plunked it down on the table and grabbed the stool across from him.

After a moment she said, "You're the guy who killed his daughter and the Patterson girl in that house fire a year back."

Tom straightened and stared at the girl's chopped bangs, bleached hair, and tight-fitting tank top, at the smile playing over the edges of her lipsticked mouth.

"Erm," he replied, shifting his gaze and grabbing the pitcher to refill his glass.

"My dad was one of the paramedics that night," the girl said. "He says you drank a case of beer along with half a bottle of tequila and fell asleep on the couch with a cigarette in your hand. He says you slept through the whole thing."

"Go away," Tom mumbled.

"That must really screw with you." she said, resting her chin in the palm of her hand with a clack of plastic bangles. "Killing your own daughter like that."

"That's a funny way of looking at it," she said. "The Pattersons hate your guts for what you did to their Julie. I hear people talk about it after church service. How they wish you had died that night."

"You think a day goes by I don't wish the same thing?" Tom said, his voice cracking. "Leave me alone."

"My dad saved your life that night, you know," the girl said with disdain, nudging the pitcher forward. "I just thought you should know that."

"He should have saved hers," Tom spat. "Now go away."

The girl pushed off from the table and rejoined the group by the dartboard, leaving the pitcher of beer behind.

Tom managed to take one more sip before his vision began to swim and a sick feeling welled up from his stomach. His head throbbed with echoes and fractured shadows as his legs tangled in the rungs of the bar stool when he tried to stand. He fell flat on his face and vomited across the tiled floor. The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness was the sound of feet shuffling by, a sound that roared like thunder in his ears as all was swallowed in darkness.

• • •

The bar was dim and empty when Tom woke, his chin sore and covered with a thin film of sputum. Grasping the edge of the pool table, he hauled himself up and looked around. The girls and their boyfriends by the dartboard were gone, as was everyone else that had been there. The lights were off, though the juke box still reverberated dully to the thrumming rhythm of a Bob Dylan song.

"Then they bring them to the factory

"Where the heart attack machine

"Is strapped across their shoulders

"And then the kerosene"

He walked through the empty bar to the door, the taste of blood in his mouth where he had bit his tongue. He swung the door open and stepped out onto Jefferson Street, a chill wind ruffling his hair. He began to walk home.

There were no cars on the streets, nor passersby on the sidewalks. All the bulbous orange streetlights were dark, as were all the windows he passed. All was silent except for the wind and the skittering of dead leaves past his feet. Shuddering against the cold, he continued on with a quickened pace through downtown's abandoned historic district.

He saw it standing astride the railroad tracks. What at first appeared to be only shadow was a solid mass that shifted ever so slightly at his arrival in the brick and mortar chasm between the slumping old warehouses. He could just make out the sidling of a massive rust-flecked shoulder in its joint, taut tar-slathered sinews glistening in the moonlight. Standing still, Tom's breath caught in his chest as he gazed into twin pinprick furnaces floating in the opaque mass nine feet off the ground. The fiery specks gazed back motionlessly as an oozing slit beneath them tore open into a deep red gash rimmed with shards of colored glass and twisted nails. The shadowmouth twisted into a grin and rasped a single word.

"Shelley," it said.

Tom ran.

He could hear the thing scuttling down the street behind him, getting closer. Its voice seemed to babble lowly at him, nonsensically gargling at first. Then rising in pitch to a piercing scream that matched his own, mocking him. He staggered blindly, crying out for help as he groped his way through the darkened city toward the river where he could see the lights of the suspension bridge winking through the fog. No one came to his aid, and he imagined them huddled in their beds, listening stoically to the terror they had set loose as it unfurled itself madly into the cold world beyond their locked doors and shuttered windows.

Tom Leggett Jr. was alone.

What happens next? That is for you to decide.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.

Extras

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
The Hawk Eye Newspaper ~ 800 South Main Street, PO Box 10, Burlington, IA 52601-0010 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service